One of Australia’s newest regional giving circles, the Women’s Giving Circle at the Northern Rivers Community Foundation, is using hyper-local knowledge to support women and girls in the region.
Spanning seven local government areas in far north NSW, the Women’s Giving Circle is committed to listening and learning from grassroots organisations operating within the community.
“One of the things I love most about our work is that the empowerment is back with the community organisations,” says Amy Colli, Coordinator of the Women’s Giving Circle.
“I think that's quite important. We're not directing what the projects are that need support, we’re inviting in localised knowledge to learn what's needed.”
The decades-long housing crisis in the Northern Rivers was worsened by catastrophic floods in 2022. In 2023 there were over 1,300 domestic violence related assaults reported to police and more than 2,300 women in the region sought help from a homelessness service.
“As a collective, we are contributing to the wellbeing, safety and empowerment of women and girls across our community with far more impact than if we were giving alone,” Amy says.
Our Women's Giving Circle started in 2021 thanks to then chair of NRCF, Nicole Weber who was familiar with the collective giving model and saw the opportunity to bring it to the Northern Rivers. It was difficult to bring people together in person at the time because of the pandemic. It got off to a solid start, but we knew there was more growth available.
Then the Northern Rivers was impacted by devastating floods in 2022 which meant more setbacks and even greater need across our region.
Since late 2023, we’ve really started to grow the circle and have a greater presence and awareness across the region. Last year we had around 30 members but we’re on track now to reach our target of 100 members (or more!) in 2024.
The strongest point of connection is word-of-mouth with members of our giving community telling their friends who come along to events where they’re hearing from past grant recipients or seeing our newsletters and communications.
Our members are very diverse. We have businesswomen who want to give back to the community; then there's a cohort of women who have the capacity to give and find the collective experience an important part of their giving portfolio; and then there are members who have a real connection to empowering women and girls who are aligned through personal experience.
One of the ways we've made diverse membership possible is by introducing a range of donation options: a once-off donation, an annual donation of $1,000, or you can nominate to give $20 weekly or $85 a month.
In terms of how our Giving Circle works, we have two fund avenues where the money is split 50-50.
One is the Northern Rivers Women's Fund, which is an ongoing perpetuity fund which is invested ethically. The Fund gives back to our community at a rate of 4 per cent every year which ensures we've got a pool of money for projects that help women and girls in each of our community grants rounds.
The distribution of the other half of the funds are determined by our members. Local community organisations are invited to apply and our grants assessment committee narrows the pool down to two finalists who are mentored to develop a pitch for our presentation night in September. That’s when our members come together to hear from these organisations and it’s always a beautiful night because it builds strong connections between the organisations and members who see directly how their funds are helping. Then our members vote, and both projects receive a grant, with one slightly higher than the other.
We’ve made two rounds of grants now and one of the key projects that stands out, The Returning, focused on Indigenous new mothers in our community. Our funding enabled them to connect with grandmothers and aunties along with providing resources and tools to support their journey. The Returning was also able to source a commercial kitchen and provide meals to mothers in their first few months after giving birth.
Another project was Walking Tall through the Kyogle Community Centre which helped a group of young women who were a little bit displaced in life and disengaged, with a program of physical support and confidence-building skills so that they could emerge and go onto further study or work depending on their goals. Interestingly, some of those women are no longer in the region because they've gone on to bigger and better things in terms of their goals for travel, work and further study.
Sometimes very localised projects like these don't fit into neat boxes and it can be difficult to attract funding from organisations that aren’t familiar with the needs of our region. This is another benefit of having a Giving Circle that’s deeply connected to our local communities.
I've learned how powerful it is to be part of a giving community where there's that direct correlation between yourself and what's happening in your own backyard.
For me, it's about direct connection. Hearing from local people and projects and seeing where the need is - that's really special. Seeing the tangible differences the Giving Circle is contributing to is very powerful. It spurs me to keep talking about it and keep finding ways we can engage business and community and government to make a difference.
I would love to see the Women’s Giving Circle reach its target of 100 members this year and from there, I would love to see additional giving circles grow across the Northern Rivers. Imagine if we could have seven women’s giving circles, one in each LGA – it would be very, very powerful! That’s my ambition for collective giving in our region.
Interview was conducted with Amy Colli
